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Dániel Boros

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Posts posted by Dániel Boros

  1. Because Lebanon and Palestine aren't in another galaxy. The people in Lebanon and Palestine are plenty close enough, and connected enough to matter what they are doing and what happens to them.

    Government's role is to protect the rights of its citizens. If you wish to fight for human rights in Lebanon and Palestine go ahead, but don't send others to die in your place.

    What you speak of is Alturism and there are plenty of places where military action would be required but nobody cares about.

    They did? What? When? And more importantly, are you an antisemitic conspiracy theorist? If you are, tell me now, so I can start ignoring you.

    http://en.wikipedia....ki/Lavon_Affair

  2. People need to think for themselves

    Why not teach that in a church?

    Is that an advice not worth giving?

    Imagine if instead of two thousand years of Christianity we had two thousand years of religious Objectivism :smartass: .

    If we can teach math in school why can't we teach objectivism in church? Why is that such a bad thing?

    If you had to chant a thousand times:"Think for yourself!" Maybe one day you would.

  3. By the way, Objectivism rejects democracy as the “tyranny of the majority,” in favor of a constitutional republic founded on the principle of individual rights.

    yea yea you know what I meant...

    So which is it?

    My question exactly. This stuff with sharia seems to be totally unrelated... would it matter if they didn't have it or not?

    Iran has spread Sharia to Lybia Lebanon and to Palestine already, and are leveraging those successes to bring Israel back into the Ummah. It sounds like you are giving them a free pass because they haven’t yet succeeded in fully implementing Sharia in Western nations.

    Why should we care about Lebanon and Palestine?

    The only way you can escape any accusation of altruism, if you add Israel as well as a third party. Very convinient that they are there...

    We can't fight Sharia, just like we can't fight terrorism. We are fighting a particular brand of aggressive foreign state whose leaders share an ideology.

    You use the phrase, "taking advantage," as if a proxy attack isn't a completely legitimate reason to declare war. Perhaps there is confusion about the word, "proxy?" In the context of international conflict, the word "proxy" means, "surrogate." Surrogates are used to attempt to create plausible deniability, thereby escaping well deserved blame for military action. The proper response to a proxy attack is to deny the aggressor the plausible deniability it seeks and to use force to stop further attacks using any means necessary. If peaceful solutions had a hobbit's chance in Mordor of succeeding, I'd advocate their use. That peaceful measures will not work is clear; advocacy of peaceful measures is naïve.

    Do we have irrefutable evidence that the Iranian government is involved? The difference between proxy and non proxy is very important.

    As I mentioned before Hitler attacked Poland using the excuse that Polish proxies attacked a German facility (they were German prisoners).

    The Israelis also tried something similar in Egypt to get the US into war.

    Also it's not like Iran is the only one doing proxy attacks unless nuclear scientists dying is a natural occurrence in Iran.

    Proxy attacks were a specialty of the CIA and now were are blaming the Arabs for becoming copycats.

  4. It is meaningless to speak of living things outside the context of evolution.

    How so? It's not like Darwin invented biology.

    To me it seems that evolution somehow supports the desired World view of people just like creationism does.

    Whether evolution supports a view or not should not matter at least not if we are supporting objective science and not something else...

    Evolution is at the bottom of natural sciences considering its verifiability and no amount of wishful thinking or bashing creationism will change that... some research might

  5. So spreading sharia isn't bad just spreading sharia by force. I would argue that spreading anything by force is bad.

    Like spreading democracy by force...

    Rand said "The end does not justify the means."

    Okay so these states want to spread sharia by force so we should attack them before they do because they have already attacked us even though they did not spread sharia when they attacked.

    No I mean seriously are we trying to take advantage of the fact that they have attacked us by their proxies so that we can fight Sharia?

    Essentially we are trying to spread the territory governed by our phony fascist democracies so it's not that much different from what they want to achieve.

    I see no right and wrong in this fight... just two countries wanting to tear each other into pieces.

    You don't even consider the possibility of a peaceful solution only those that will inevitably lead to war. It's like pre WWI all over again.

  6. Corporations are entities with rights normally only humans can possess. These rights are given to them by the state. They are not natural rights.

    Is there or can there be any justification for such rights?

    P.S.:

    I also feel that with corporations shifting the responsibility from leadership to the shareholders often causes people to make risky deals they would have not made otherwise.

  7. Okay I wasn't expecting that...

    Well Sharia may be a threat and probably will be for many countries in the near future, but that doesn't mean we have to take arms against it. Sharia will take hold of western Europe first, but not because of terrorism but because of immigration. Immigration is a much more effective tool than radical extremism and the islamists know that quite well.

    I think if we want Muslims to give up on Sharia law (or Islam) we will need to go to the Middle East and give them something better and by something better I do not mean more bullets. I think we should use the private sector to spread a better ideology. I mean war's not cheaper nor is it more effective. Let's spread the message of Rand over the Islamic world. If they don't allow it publicly we can always do it under ground. The only reason why the army is more favorable because that way nobody would have to lift a finger... except for the soldiers of course. The war of ideas are not fought with knives and bullets. Free trade of goods and services would be a good start.

    There's absolutely no guarantee that another two wars will have any favorable results. If you want to pacify the middle east you would have to do it the hard way.

  8. Craig Biddle just wrote a piece that answers your question about what to do now, Daniel.

    So War...

    Why not include North Korea as well? No terrorists there? Too bad Koreans you are too peaceful to be liberated.

    Terrorists are like corporations.. if you fuck with them they will go to another country. Than you will have a reason to invade the next country because they now have terrorists as well.

    And of course the wars may be mistaken as unjustified aggression against a sovereign state and create more terrorists.

    Remember the excuse Hitler used to attack Poland? Hint: Terrorism....

    Terrorists don't privatize oil plants. I can understand intervention to protect property, but because of the acts of selected individuals?

    Okay maybe you have a moral right to invade Iran and Arabia, but will that solve the problem?

    Hasn't been intervention the cause of all of the terrorism to begin with?

    I would I argue it isn't in the citizens rational moral interest to create more wars.

    Can war stop terrorism to begin with? Look at Iraq for reference...

  9. That would be context dropping. Religion is more than a morality, it is an attempt to explain nature with invalid means and methods.

    The dark ages was not the absense of philosophy but the prevalence of bad philosophy.

    So are you trying to actually ask about persuasive techniques for spreading a philosophy?( to make this synonymous with religion is silly)

    More like the role of the techniques that are used to spread morality.

    Since I can't define my the terms (since that would be silly) at which my question is directed I am going to call these universal techniques of churches: 54dgf4w45sdf.

    So what is the role of 54dgf4w45sdf in society?

    Are only those who happen to look for the knowledge on morality have the chance to gain some of it, or is it alright for those who poses the knowledge to spread it (if they want to).

    Would it be wrong to do that?

  10. I would call it a market failure if the government has to intervene in the market for a third party.

    I will be more specific:

    Imported drinks in plastic containers. For arguments sake let's assume that plastic is very bad for the environment.

    I am assuming that the price to compensate for the harm on the environment caused by these plastic containers should be put directly on the vendor and not on the person otherwise the vendor has no incentive to develop better containers.

    How do you do put a tax on the company if the company is abroad? Should government put a tax on the items themselves or should govt. tax the items when they enter the country?

  11. Why do you have to know my views on morality?

    Think of a religion that teaches the morality you agree with and start from there.

    What is it about "pure philosophy" that you think makes it not able to endure in civilization? What facts give rise to your strange response?

    It's called the Dark Ages, and even if philosophy survives only a minor part of society actually practice it.

    Philosophy is the study of morality (and other things) not the means by which morality is spread in society.

  12. I think I have a good grasp on the concept.

    Are you suggesting there is something in objectivism that makes any kind of organized religion by definition a bad idea?

    I mean I would argue that superstition is as necessary for religion as is fiat currency for free markets.

    If religious people can believe in superstition they can believe in anything...

  13. Your basically making religion synonymous with philosophy. In which case the answer is trivial. Some philosophies are bad (most) and some aren't. ("institutions" are merely a collection of individuals)

    So basically there's absolutely no reason why religions like Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism survived for so long and can survive even today.

    So we shouldn't teach people our beliefs using religion because we may be wrong?

    We might be wrong about science as well you know...

    Do you need an explanation of what’s wrong with religious morality, from the Objectivist perspective? How much background do you have?

    Doesn't matter how much background I have on religions or how much I hate them.

    My interest in religions is not what they teach, but how, and is there anything beneficial in the how to us.

    I plead again as I did before please do not turn this topic into a hate fest against religions.

  14. My question is: what is the official (or non official) stance of objectivists regarding the role of government in the case of pollution, market failures and cost on third parties?

    See video reference for the libertarian position.

    Should the government intervene -like the libertarians say- or should it not? If should how (tax/regulation, federal level/or below)? If not why?

  15. Daniel, care to elaborate on our enemies determining our allies? Specifically, what method would you use to determine your ally after being presented with an enemy? I'm also interested to know why you don't seem to think peacetime alliances are legitimate.

    Why do you need allies in peacetime? What for? Free trade is the best policy a country can have with another country in peacetime.

    Because of the military Alliances the EU countries have they are always drawn into the fights where they have no interests. Like Afghanistan... Why are our soldiers there? What for? They didn't commit any crime against most of the EU countries...

    Likewise the US is drawn in by the EU where it has no interest fighting. NATO is a coalition of epic fail.

    How to determine our ally? That's simple: whomever have the means and willingness to be our ally.

    Picking allies based on ideals would be a form of altruism, because we would not pick the countries most able to protect our own.

    (The US was the ally of the Soviets in WWII because they had a common enemy: Japan and to some degree Germany)

    The US is in a position where it can pick allies and enemies freely, but what if it weren't? What if the US did not have the might to annihilate anyone.

    They would have to pick allies based on the country's military might and not based on the purity of their ideals.

  16. From my understanding, the United States government rarely, if ever (maybe actions related to manifest destiny?) justifies its actions by the 'Might is Right' notions of the Old World. For example, considering the prominence and success of the US, we have not been particularly imperial or aggressive when compared to the Old World states of Britain or Spain. Military action of the past few decades has generally been founded upon the altruistic notion, not "Might is Right". Except for the hawkishness riled up by politicians trying to get re-elected, we don't really care to see lives and money wasted in war. No values are gained, only destroyers are halted from further value-destruction. Rose Wilder Lane discusses this at length and with greater eloquence in "The Discovery of Freedom", comparing her experience with that of an Italian man of the Old World mentality.

    How you justify your actions not necessarily justify your actions. If the USA wants to promote altruism and democracy why didn't they go to the Congo when 6 million people died there in a bloody civil war?

    Or why didn't they intervened in 56 when the Hungarians started their revolution?

    Spreading democracy is just government propaganda especially if you are giving money to dictators at the same time.

  17. Please don't make this a Christianity VS Secularism debate and hate fest.

    I defined my terms very clearly so that none could do that.

    Maybe Christians use churches for charity because Christianity is an altruistic philosophy and not just because it is a religion.

    What's wrong with adults bringing children to churches to learn morality? Is morality not important? Are parents the best moral teachers ever (even when they work)?

    What's the difference between learning math and learning morality that causes this divide?

    Is morality and math both based on objective reality? Isn't it the content what really matters and not necessarily how it is being thought?

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